Citation

Abstract / Synopsis

Eighty-two isolates of P. multocida were recovered from healthy and
diseased rabbits in a rabbitry at Universiti Putra Malaysia. S ixty three isolates
were obtained from adult rabbits and 1 9 isolates were from juvenile rabbits.
Bacterial identification by biochemical tests, capsular and somatic serotyping and
sensitivity to the antimicrobials were conducted. Capsular typing revealed that
the major capsular type was type A (89%), while type D was less frequent ( 1 1 %).
Somatic serotyping of 46 isolates showed that serotypes 1 and 3 were more
frequent among the capsular types. Most isolates were sensitive to several
common antimicrobials but some were resistant to neomycin, penicillin,
cloxacillin and tetracycline.
Six of 40 isolates of P. multocida from healthy ( 1 8 isolates) and diseased
(22 isolates) rabbits were found to harbour plasmids. There was no correlation
between presence of plasmids and serotype, resistance to antimicrobial agents
and from the site which the bacteria were cultured. Random amplification
polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was applied to subtype 40 P. multocida isolates
using two single primers to test their abilities to generate individual fingerprints.
A wide heterogeneity within the isolates was observed. Sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) of the 40 isolates revealed over
40 protein bands with high molecular weight bands indicating striking
homogeneity among the isolates. Twenty-two different patterns were observed.